was nursing a numbed and nerveless hand. He
sat down slowly, his eyes on the face of his antagonist.

"You should admire this weapon, Admiral," Crochard went on, extending
for his inspection what looked like an ordinary revolver. "It is a most
useful toy, of my own invention--or, perhaps, I would better say adapted
by me from an invention of that ingenious Sieur Hyacinthe, who was
pistol-maker to the Great Louis. Should you ever visit Paris, I should
be charmed to show you the original at the Carnavalet. This embodies
some improvements of my own. It can, as you have seen, discharge, almost
noiselessly, a disabling ball; it can also, not quite so noiselessly,
discharge a bullet which will penetrate your body, and which no bone
will stop or turn aside. Should you open your mouth to shout, I can,
still with this little implement, fling into your face a liquid which
will strike you senseless before your shout can come, or a poison a
single breath of which means death. And I assure you, my dear Admiral,
that I shall hesitate no more than you to use any of these Agencies
which may be necessary."

Pachmann listened, glowering; but, he told himself, he was not yet
defeated; and he sat rubbing his hand and measuring his adversary.

"What do you imagine to be the exact nature of the services of which you
speak?" he asked, at last.

"Their nature? Why, their nature will be of the same sort as those
already offered to your Emperor."

"Yes?"

"The position of leader in the movement for world-wide disarmament,"
said Crochard, and smiled as Pachmann's lips whitened. "Ah, my dear
Admiral, your Emperor is too selfish, too ambitious--he has, as an
English poet puts it, that ambition which overleaps itself. He should
have accepted the arrangement which M. Vard proposed. That would have
been glory enough. But no; he must dream of being a greater than
Napoleon, of world-empire; and in consequence he will lose that which he
already has. But I foresaw it; I foresaw it from the moment M. Vard
stipulated that Alsace-Lorraine must be returned to France. I knew that
your Emperor was not great enough--that he has too small a soul--to
consent to that restitution!"

Pachmann raised his head slowly.

"So it was you who listened at the door, that night?" he said.

"Yes, it was I. And it was I who discovered that you and a companion
whom I will not name waited for sunrise, one Monday morning, on the quay
at Toulon. For that, France must hav